


if you need rest (i'll guard your dreams so you can sleep)

by metaphasia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamsharing, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, If You Get Married In The Dream Do You Get Married For Real, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/pseuds/metaphasia
Summary: Harry had always had nightmares as long as Hermione had known him. But after the Battle of Hogwarts, they took a new, terrifying, potentially magical form. But the one thing Hermione wouldn't do is let him suffer alone when she could help him.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 107
Collections: Just Married Exchange 2020





	if you need rest (i'll guard your dreams so you can sleep)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



The house was silent and still in the dead of night, until a scream tore through it.

Hermione had rolled out of bed, pulled her wand out from under her pillow and was halfway through tracing a ward out in front of her when her mind was able to catalogue what was happening.

She was in Grimmauld Place.

They had won the war, in the fiercest battle she had even seen, just a week ago.

The scream continued to sound throughout the house, unbroken, and she realized that it was Harry.

She sprinted from her room, not bothering to throw on anything over her night clothes of joggers and a loose tee, and made it to his room in a matter of moments. He was deep in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing back and forth on his bed. She had seen him in this state many times before, and had long experience at waking him. She gently reached forward, placing her hand on his upper arm, and he jolted awake instantly, his eyes unfocused. He never woke easily, and she hated causing him that torment, but it was still kinder than letting him suffer in his nightmares.

“You're safe Harry,” she told him, her voice gentle. At her words, his eyes now locked on her form, scanning around but unable to fully focus without his glasses on. “We're in Grimmauld. It's safe, Harry.”

He slumped back down into the bed, the tension that had filled him draining out of his body and leaving him boneless like a puppet with its strings cut. “Hermione?” he asked.

“It's me,” she told him. “I'm right here.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, letting it take some of her weight, but still dangling off the side. “You were having another nightmare.”

“They're not nightmares, Hermione,” he told her. “It's something else.”

“Harry,” she told him, forcing her voice to remain soft, despite her exasperation at having to have this argument again. “It's perfectly normal to have night terrors. Especially after the trauma that we went through.”

The first night, when the fighting finally ended well after full dark had settled across the country, they had all poured into makeshift sleeping quarters in what was left of the castle, filling the dorms and a dozen other rooms beside. She and Harry had both wound up in beds in the Hospital Wing, and Harry had been fine. But every night since that first one, he had started screaming halfway through the night, plagued by bad dreams. Finally, he had relocated himself from the Burrow to Grimmauld Place, so that the isolation would stop anyone else from losing sleep. Hermione, however, had followed him there, unwilling to let him face the terrors in his sleep alone, when she could help wake him out of them. Losing any sleep herself was well worth the price, she felt.

“Hermione, I'm telling you, they're not normal dreams,” he insisted, and when she rolled her eyes, pressed on. “The Firebolt. Malfoy and the Cabinet. Every time one of us thinks something is going on, and the other insists that it's nothing, it always is something. Please, just trust me on this?” The memories of the past arguments that had escalated into their few true fights burned in her mind, and she felt her insistence melt away as she relented to his argument.

“Alright,” she told him. “Alright, Harry, if you say it's something more, I believe you. I'll look into it, and see what it could be. But you have to describe to me what's going on in these dreams, if I'm going to be able to find anything.”

He hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “They start out like normal dreams,” he said, slowly, his hesitance at revealing the details even to her plain. “Or nightmares. It's different every time. But then, no matter what is happening, this darkness starts to overtake everything. It's not like the dream ends and I'm just asleep and not thinking, it's clearly still a dream, because I _remember_ it. But it's like this, this _void_ , overtakes everything. I can feel it surround me and it's like I'm being consumed, like I'll never escape it.”

Hermione shuddered slightly at his words, her mind already racing to see if his description matched anything she had heard of.

“I'll do some research,” she said, and stood up. She brushed her knuckles against the back of his hand, and got ready to leave the room. “In the morning. For now, do you think you can try and fall back asleep again? We still have half the night left.”

Hermione closed the book with a sigh, and slumped back in her chair. She had spent most of the day looking through magical references for any curse or condition that might match what Harry was experiencing. She had made a brief trip back to Hogwarts, to check in with Madam Pomfrey and even spoke to Professor McGonagall, to see if there was anyone she could recommend talking to. She had even made some magical scans of Harry, to see if there was anything she could detect. She sat for a few moments, her eyes closed, as she processed everything.

Finally, she stood up, her muscles protesting at the sudden movement when she had been hunched over in the same position for hours, and made her way down to the kitchen. There she found Harry sitting at the table, an uneaten sandwich in front of him, reading through a letter. She sat down next to him, and reached out to grab half the sandwich and started to eat it.

“Hey!” he protested, half-hearted, before he met her eyes, and she raised an eyebrow at him. He smiled, stood up, and made his way over to the counter, where he began to prepare another sandwich. “Find anything?”

“Maybe,” she told him, and at the word, he turned, his vision intent on her. “I have a theory, at least. But that's all it is, a best guess.”

“I'd take your best guess,” he said, and turned back around, continuing his preparations. “Over the advice of pretty much any expert.”

“That's the problem,” she elaborated. “There aren't really that many experts when it comes to dreams, or the mind for that matter. Occlumency and Legilimency is pretty much the extent of what mind magic exists, actually, along with a few magical diseases and creatures, but none of that matches what you're seeing.”

She took a deep breath before pressing on. “And while there are only a few experts that deal with mind magic, and some healers that know about dreams, there's no experts at all when it comes to soul magic. I might actually be the closest thing to a defining authority on soul magic in the world right now. Headmaster Dumbledore used most of his resources, both inside Britain and in the world at large through the I.C.W., to eliminate as much knowledge about the subject as he could. He was terrified someone would follow in Riddle's footsteps. He let me see some of the books he had confiscated, back before he died, and I picked up some more when we were on the hunt, both from investigating the locket and from what few books he didn't destroy before he died.”

Hermione took a deep breath, and forced herself back on track. “But, my point is that while I might be the one person who knows the most about soul magic and is still alive, I still know barely anything about how it works, and there's nowhere I can go to learn more. So, while I have a theory, I'm making a lot of this up as I go along, and there's no guarantee I'm right.”

She turned to face him, and he gave her an acknowledging nod at her disclaimer. “Right,” she said. “You had a psychic connection with Riddle. It wasn't just the Horcrux in your head, although that might have been the cause, because the one in the Diary had no idea what was going on in the world around it, whereas you could tell where he was and what he was doing. That connection is like a tunnel, going from your mind, to his. And you've gone through that tunnel, into his mind, and he into yours, plenty of times, especially while you were dreaming. And when he died, that connection was still there, but the other end is now empty. So that void in your dreams, is, well a void. It's an open tunnel, but it doesn't connect to anything.”

She paused to take a bite of her sandwich and looked over to see how well he was following her.

“So, instead of dreaming and being in his mind, I'm seeing the emptiness where his soul used to be?” Harry asked her. “Is that dangerous?”

“I don't think so?” she shrugged as she answered. “I don't think it's going to actually consume you, like you were afraid of, at any rate. But it's certainly not anything that people were meant to experience, which is probably where all the fear in your dreams is coming from. And that sort of long term lack of sleep and rest isn't healthy for you.”

“So what can we do about it?” he asked, and picked up his now finished plate, and walked back over to the table.

“There's two options, really,” she told him, and took another bite, while he did the same. “Well, aside from doing nothing and hoping it eventually improves. The first option is for you to learn Occlumency, to the sort of level that masters in the art learn it to, and use that to block out the connection. But that will take years to do.”

“Wait, why?” he asked. “Wasn't just a beginner level of it supposed to be enough to block it out back in fifth year?”

“Because you didn't learn a beginner level back in fifth year,” she answered, and winced. “The connection was still new back then, and weak. But instead of pushing it away, you actively embraced it. And when he learned it existed, Riddle started using it to influence your dreams as well, pouring his magic into it every night. All of that enlarged that tunnel. And then Riddle eventually blocked it off with Occlumency on his end, when you overpowered him in the Ministry, and you never bothered to learn it. So now, to avoid getting sucked in to that tunnel, you would need to maintain active Occlumency protections while you sleep. You're amazing at picking up magic when you're practicing it, Harry, so it might only take you a few months to get to the skill level you would need to block the connection. But that sort of maintaining it, that's like muscle memory. It could take months or years to be able to keep the tunnel plugged while you sleep.”

Harry winced. “I don't know if I can wait that long to fix this. Especially not if I'm going back to Hogwarts, and going to be in the dorms with everyone. What about Dreamless Sleep Potions?”

“No, Harry,” Hermione told him, her voice unyielding. “They're fine for a night or two, here and there. But you need dreams, to process what happens during the day. And more than that, they interrupt your sleep cycle to prevent dreams. If you were to use them long term, you would get less and less rest, and just deteriorate. You'd barely be able to function after a week or two.”

“Fine,” he agreed. “Then what's the other option? You said there was a second choice.”

It was Hermione's turn to wince. “This is just a theory, but. Normally Legilimency is short term, requiring active concentration to maintain, and line of sight. But if someone were to establish a Legilimency probe in your mind, they might be able to locate where the tunnel is in there. If they were willing, you might be able to somehow merge the two together, and connect their mind to the other end of that tunnel. If it worked, the connection might maintain itself, even after they actively drop their concentration on connecting to your mind, and it might still exist even if you aren't in the same location, just like it did with Riddle.”

“You will note, however,” Hermione told him, a wry twist to her lips. “That there were about five different conditionals in that idea. No one has ever experienced this sort of psychic connection you have before, so this is all just best guess. And, assuming it works, it would mean that your dreams were connected to this other person, instead of the void, just like they were with Riddle.”

Harry thought for a long moment, and they both ate in silence. Just as Hermione polished off her sandwich, he finally spoke. “Alright then. It's the best option I've got.”

“Great,” Hermione told him. “Now we just have to somehow teach Ginny Legilimency.”

“No!” Harry exclaimed, his eyes blowing open wide. “Not Ginny. I thought you - I don't …”

“You don't feel comfortable with her being the one to see your dreams?” she asked him, filling in what he was unable to say.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice still quiet, and he dropped his head down.

“Who do you feel comfortable with then, Harry?” she asked him. “Who do you trust enough?”

His eyes swung up to meet hers at the question, and she felt her eyes widen at the implicit message. “You don't have to!” he quickly let out. “If you don't feel comfortable with it either, you don't have to. But … you already know most of my nightmares. I'm okay with you knowing the rest.”

Hermione reached across the table, taking his hand in hers, and squeezing as tightly as she could.

“I would be honored, Harry,” she told him, and steeled herself.

“I guess I have to learn Legilimency.”

It had been a rough few days for the two best friends. Harry had continued to slip into the same nightmare every night. The screams woke Hermione, who in turn woke her best friend, and neither felt particularly rested. Luckily, Hermione was able to pick up the very basics of Legilimency in only three days. It would take her significantly longer to learn enough to actually navigate a probe to look for specific memories or to overcome Occlumency blocks, but all they needed was for her to establish a connection with Harry at all.

“You ready to give this a try, Harry?” she asked him. They had moved two of the more comfortable chairs to the library, facing each other, to try and maximize their chances of establishing and maintaining a connection. The less outside distractions they had, the more likely Hermione would be able to keep the probe going long enough. “It's not too late to change your mind, you know.”

“Let's get on with it,” Harry merely said, and drew himself up as if readying himself for battle.

“Remember, you aren't trying to resist,” Hermione reminded him, for the tenth time that day. “You want to welcome it. You'll be able to push me out at the slightest effort, so you have to help stabilize it. _Legilimens_!”

The magic flowed outward from her, connecting her to Harry's mind, and she saw his memories shimmer up in front of her vision. The sight fluttered in front of her for a moment, before Harry managed to open his mind more fully, and she felt herself relax.

“Great, Harry,” she told him, her voice echoing slightly in her mind from where Harry heard it. “Now think about the connection to Riddle, try to direct us there.”

As she saw the scene around her shift and zoom, she tried to focus on the texture of his mind. There weren't words to truly describe what she was experiencing, but it felt as if there was a weight to the air around her.

And then, that weight suddenly rocketed skyward, as if gravity had increased, and she felt a pressure emanating from the section of his mind directly in front of her. She reached out, trying to touch it, and _felt_ it. It was just like Harry had described to her, a void in his mind. It felt like a drain, pulling her forward towards it.

“Now what?” Harry asked her.

“I'm making this up as I go, Harry,” she reminded him. “Try pushing your magic into it? And into me at the same time?”

She felt Harry's magic reach out, touching her mind through the probe, and could sense it bridging the gap between her and the vortex. However, it wasn't quite enough, Harry's mind standing between her and it still.

“I don't think it's working, Hermione,” he told her, his voice strained from the concentration and the magic.

“I know,” she told him. They had come this far, she couldn't give up now. She racked her brain, trying to think of what else she could try. “Hold on, Harry, let me try reaching out to it too.”

She stretched her magic further, pushing it down the probe into Harry's mind and then past that and into the hole in his mind.

The moment her magic touched it, it was as if she completed an electrical circuit between herself, Harry, and the void. She felt white hot pain explode across her entire perception, and heard Harry cry out with a scream matching her own. It took a small eternity for the pain to subside before she was able to focus on anything outside her own body. When the stars retreated from her vision, and the ringing in her ears cleared to let the rest of the world came back into focus, she heard Harry's ragged breathing.

“You alright, Harry?” she asked, unwilling to try to move unless she had to.

“You didn't say how much it was going to hurt,” he complained good-naturedly.

“I told you I was making this up as I went along,” she reminded him. “Just hope that the pain means it actually worked, and all this wasn't for nothing.”

Harry groaned at her words, and began to stand up.

“I don't know about you,” he told her. “But I'm beat. I think it's an early night tonight.”

“That sounds perfect,” she answered him.

They made their way up the stairs in a companionable silence, until they reached the floor with their rooms on it. Hermione stopped at her door, and waited until Harry reached his, and turned back to face her.

“Sweet dreams, Harry,” she told him, and stepped inside to change for bed.

_Hermione was standing in a room, decorated as if it was a bedroom for a small child. There was a mural of Quidditch equipment decorating along the walls, the paint clearly magical based on how the Snitches fluttered and brooms zoomed around. A small crib stood against one wall, and toys of all kinds covered most of the floor, only a path between the crib and the door clear. Suddenly, there was a commotion from beyond the door, and she heard a voice shout out._

“ _Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off -”_

_The door burst open in front of her, and a woman, only a few years older than her, came running in, a baby bundled in her arms, kicking it closed behind her. The woman's red hair blew around her face, and she placed the child in the crib, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and then turned back to face the door as it burst open for the second time in a minute._

_There, standing in the doorway, only three feet from her, was Lord Voldemort._

_Ever since they had learned of the Taboo, Harry and herself had resorted to calling him Tom Riddle, unwilling to give in to the terror and hysteria that gripped the rest of the nation. Here though, it was hard to remember that name, when he stood larger than life and waves of pure fear emanated outwards from him, filling her with dread in the dream world._

_Lily Potter strode forward and squared her shoulders, standing between him and the crib, filling the space as much as she could. “Not Harry! Not Harry! Please – I'll do anything -”_

_Harry had described what he had seen of this night to her, but she had never seen it herself. Watching his mother stand before the wizard who had been the bane of their existence, had terrorized not only the two of them, but the entirety of Britain, while armed with nothing, was awe inspiring._

_Hermione knew how this story ended however, and this dream was no different._

“ _Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!” Voldemort shouted, and, when Harry's mother refused to move, raised his wand in an incantation Hermione recognized all too well. “Avada Kedavra!”_

_Mrs. Potter's body dropped to the floor in a flash of green light, and Hermione flinched away from looking directly at it, her gaze tracking towards the crib. It had changed however, and, instead of a baby inside, she saw Harry standing there, staring at his mother helplessly._

“ _And now it is your turn,” she heard the cold, clear voice utter, and turned back to face the center of Harry's nightmare._

_Only to find him looking, not at Harry, but at herself._

“ _Goodbye, Miss Granger,” he said, and raised his wand once more. “Avada -”_

Hermione awoke with a start, a cold sweat pouring down her neck. A quick Tempus charm showed that it was still too early in the morning to head down for breakfast, and she lay back in her bed.

On the bright side, it seemed her theory had panned out, and she had established a connection with Harry, and the terrible nightmares he had been having from Riddle's death seemed to have stopped, given that she hadn't woken up to the sound of his screaming tearing through the nearly empty house.

But just because his new nightmares had ended, didn't mean that his sleep was now unplagued.

He had seen so many terrors, and while she had been right there next to him for a great many of them, all of her greatest regrets in life were those times when she wasn't able to be there for him.

When they were standing surrounded by the purple and black flames of Professor Snape's trap, she had had to turn back. When he had gone to face the basilisk, she had not even been conscious, petrified in the Hospital Wing. Every task in that bloody Tournament, she had had to sit in the stands, watching, unable to help, to do anything but bite her nails to the quick. When they went down into the Department of Mysteries, she had fallen right when the fighting had started to intensify, not able to have his back, not able to comfort him when Sirius had died. When he left with Headmaster Dumbledore to retrieve the locket, she had stayed behind, watching the map for Malfoy's plan, unable to stop him before he flooded the castle with Death Eaters.

When Harry had gone off into the woods, to face Riddle alone, to die, she had not been there for him.

She felt sometimes as if she had never been able to be there for her friend when he needed her most. That all the suffering he had gone through, he went through alone, because she wasn't there for him.

Her greatest fear was how badly she had failed him.

Hermione had sworn an oath long ago, in the privacy of her head. She was done letting Harry be alone if she could do anything about it. Every one of those times she wasn't there felt like a wound upon her psyche, a reminder that she wasn't able to let go. When he had asked her if she was willing to hold the burden of her dreams, she had leapt at the opportunity.

Now though, she realized that she not only could patch the wound in his mind, but also help him heal through the rest of the traumatic experiences he had suffered through.

A few hours had passed while she lay in her bed. Tired, but unable to fall back asleep, restless, but unwilling to get out of bed. Finally, she heard movement in the house, and dragged herself to the bathroom to ready herself for the day.

When she made her way down the stairs, she found Harry once again in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for them both. His attention was drawn to the bacon sizzling in the skillet, and he didn't look up or meet her eyes when she walked in.

“Was that what you saw?” she asked him, and saw him flinch slightly at her question. “From the Dementors?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

“And you've been having that nightmare ever since,” she stated, her voice making clear it wasn't a question. “You've been seeing that over and over, ever since third year. Ever since we were thirteen.”

“Well, you're not usually there,” he said. For a moment, she could have thought his words were an attempt at levity, but the slightest otherwise imperceptible flinch flickered through his frame. She had known him too long, knew all his tells, and could tell there was more to that statement.

“Not _usually_ ,” she said, once again her voice turning it into a statement of fact. “But sometimes, I am?”

His shoulders fell, as he collapsed down into himself. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

“It's not just me, though, is it,” she asked him, as though she could sense what he was thinking.

He hesitated.

“No,” he said. “Not just you. Sometimes it's Ginny. Or Luna. It was Cho, for a while, back in fifth year. But you most of all.”

She pieced together what he had said, and what he had not said.

“But not Ron? Or Neville?” she asked him, already knowing his answer.

“Not in that particular nightmare,” he hedged. “I've seen everyone I know die, at one time or another.”

Hermione paused for a moment, thinking carefully how to word what she wanted to say next.

“At the end of last year,” she said, picking her way through the sentence carefully. “When you broke up with Ginny, it was because you were afraid that she would be hurt, that she would be a target just for being with you.”

“You think that if anyone else loves you, you'll lose them too,” Hermione said, and slowly made her way across the room to stand behind him, her steps slow as she would if she were approaching a wounded animal. “Just like how Riddle took your mom from you.”

His slumped posture was all the answer she needed.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione's voice broke with sorrow as she spoke. “You can't give up on finding someone to love because you're afraid of losing them. The war is over. It's safe to let yourself fall in love.”

She leaned forward, and gave him a fierce hug from behind.

“And Harry,” she whispered into his ear. “You'll never lose me. No matter what.”

_Hermione found herself in a ballroom, the marble glowing golden. Floor to ceiling windows made up an entire third of the circular room's diameter, and the pinpricks of stars visible through the entire sky matched the flickering candles of sconces hung all around the perimeter of the room and a truly massive chandelier over her head. Ionic columns supporting a balcony around the edges, lined with fabric that was the same royal blue that the night was, somehow brilliant instead of dark._

_She slowly walked towards the windows, lost in the beauty of it all. It was only as she did so, that she noticed the gown she was wearing, bright yellow, strapless but with arm bands from the bodice, the bottom flaring out around her._

_There was a tap on her shoulder, and she twirled around, and saw a prince, a royal blue tailcoat over dark pants, who took her hands, and began dancing her across the room. His face was out of focus, a blur, but she could sense some energy around him that didn't leave her in any doubt over who he was._

_She buried her head in his shoulder, and felt warmth suffuse through her body as he led her around the ballroom, his one hand firm against her back while the other had his fingers intertwined with her gloved ones. Soft strings filled the air, and she let herself get lost in the smooth rhythm as they swayed around._

_Finally, the music came to an end, and she looked up to see that his face had become visible at some point during their waltz._

“ _Where are we,” Harry asked, his voice filled with wonder._

_She stared at him in slight shock, and the world around her dissolved into darkness as she felt the dream slip away into the oblivion of sleep once again._

It was early afternoon by the time Harry finally confronted her about it.

She had spent the morning talking to Ron and their other friends. The Weasleys had moved back into the Burrow after the end of the war, and invited both her and Harry to stay with them. However, as much as she loved their family, the Burrow had never felt like _home_ to her, it was always noisy and chaotic and so full of people she could never have any privacy. She had been glad when Harry had started to develop nightmares and didn't feel comfortable subjecting anyone to the screams throughout the night and she had jumped at the chance to accompany him in his isolation. She loved spending time with other people, but the chance to have a place she could retreat to when the rest of the world became overwhelming made her so glad that she and Harry had the Black residence to themselves.

She was in the study, working through some correspondence regarding the reconstruction of Hogwarts, when Harry sat down across from her. Through long habit, they had developed revision routines, and she knew Harry wouldn't disturb her when she was deep in thought, so she flicked her eyes up to him to let him know she would welcome a distraction.

“I was wondering,” he asked. “About that dream last night.”

Hermione felt herself blush slightly. “I don't think it was you originally? I think the prince was just a generic _person_ , until you entered my dream, and then you took his place.”

“Ah,” Harry said, and also blushed slightly. “I mean, I didn't know one way or the other, but that makes sense.”

Hermione nodded, half to herself, and tried to bury the feelings that dancing with Harry, again, had awoken in her.

“That's not what I was actually curious about though,” he told her, and she felt her eyebrows draw up quizzically. “Where was that place? It wasn't Hogwarts. Was it Beauxbatons or somewhere? When were you ever there?”

“When was I -” Hermione paused, and a flash of realization overtook her. “You never got to watch many movies with the Dursleys, did you.”

The words hadn't been a question, but Harry nodded anyway.

“It's from _Beauty and the Beast_ ,” she told him, her mind flashing back to when her parents had taken her to see it, many years ago, and how excited she had been, and got an idea. “Do you want to watch it?”

“How?” Harry looked at her in astonishment. “We don't have a television here.”

“That's easy enough to rectify,” Hermione told him, and stood up. “Come on, we have some shopping we have to do if we're going to have a movie night.”

_Hermione once again found herself in a ball gown, the dress nearly identical to the one she wore previously, except pink instead of yellow. The room she was in was much smaller, less a ballroom and more a sitting room. Too, it was full of people, some of whom she found herself in casual conversation with. After a short while, though, the room began to clear out, as people stepped to the edges of the room around her, and Hermione found herself standing in the middle of a line of women._

_She looked across the room to find a line of men facing them, and recognized the man directly across from her._

_It was Harry._

_Music began to float into the room, and they started an elegant, courtly dance. Forward and back they stepped, switching sides. They circled around each other, hands reaching out to each other but never touching. The dance seemed to go on for ages, and despite their never coming in contact with one another, was filled with tension. Hermione felt butterflies in her stomach at the motion, the synchronicity between her and Harry._

Harry was reading a book at the kitchen table when Hermione Apparated back to the house for lunch. Reflexively, she sneaked a look at the spine as she headed to the cupboard, and then stumbled, as her missed a step.

Harry was reading _Pride and Prejudice_.

“Everything all right there, Hermione?” he asked her, a knowing smirk on his face.

Hermione felt herself blush slightly.

“Fine,” she said primly. “Doing a spot of light reading, then?”

“I thought it might prove helpful,” Harry said, his eyes twinkling. “In case the book comes up. Never got around to this one before we switched to Hogwarts.”

“Mmm,” Hermione said, and, having gathered her meal, walked back to the table. She paused behind Harry and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “If you're looking to be prepared for casual conversation, you might want to read _Little Women_ next.”

The summer had flown by and before she knew it, it was already Harry's birthday.

The days had been busy with a thousand tasks that had apparently required their attention. There had been too few people they could truly trust, so they had both been tapped to help vet the wizards and witches who were going to be staffing the new Ministry, and organizing and participating in the trials of the Death Eaters and those who had aided their reign of terror. On top of that, now Headmistress McGonagall had asked for Hermione's aid in planning out the repairs of Hogwarts and restoring the castle to its original glory (with a few minor long overdue improvements along the way). She had also recruited both Harry and Hermione to return to Hogwarts for the coming school year, by convincing them that their presence would help the younger students feel comfortable and safe in returning themselves.

All these projects had eaten up her time but there was one that kept itself in the back of her mind, one urgent task she _had_ to complete before the summer was out.

She was heading to Australia to get her parents back.

Harry had already told her there was no way he would allow her to make the trip alone, and so they had booked tickets for a plane in mid-August, enough time to give them two weeks to find her parents before they had to be back for the Hogwarts Express on the first of September.

With all their packing still to do, the party had turned into a last hurrah for them to let loose and hang out with their friends. The Weasleys had insisted on hosting, and Mrs. Weasley had pulled out all the stops; there was a truly immense spread of food, and everyone they knew had been invited. When Harry had expressed a little nervousness to her about the size that the once intimate gathering was turning into, at her suggestion, he had talked Neville into holding a double party for the both of them.

It had apparently been a good idea, since the mood had turned raucous, and there had been many crashers who showed up to the party.

The high tension that the country had remained in over the past weeks since the final battle had spilled out and it seemed as if every witch or wizard Harry had ever met had shown up to the party to celebrate. After they had defeated Riddle, everyone had been too tired and injured to celebrate at the time. The last time Hermione had been at any sort of party had been right here, a year ago, for Bill and Fleur's wedding. Seeing the same twinkle lights and other decorations brought out, had reminded her of how different everything was since then, how many people they had lost, but also had left her with a sense of relaxation that flowed through her, and left her feeling giddy and cheerful and at _peace_ in a way she had forgotten was possible.

Finally, in the witching hour, they were able to escape from the last dregs of the festivities, and Apparated back to Grimmauld place to turn in to their beds for what sleep they could get.

_Hermione saw a pair of double doors in front of her, large arched wooden ones carved with intricate decorations. She looked around her to try to determine where she was exactly, and was able to make out some sort of foyer or entrance hall, with beautiful stained glass windows. Before she could look for more details, she heard a creak, as the doors opened in front of her, and she found herself walking through them._

_She was in a church, pews full of figures she couldn't make out, and as she walked down the aisle, music started to pipe in, a tune she was well familiar with._

_The melody of Wagner's Bridal Chorus prompted her to look down, and she saw that she was wearing a pearl white dress to match the song, and holding a bouquet of white flowers in her hands. She wasn't able to make out many of the details as she looked back up and saw that she was halfway down the aisle, halfway to the man standing at the front of the church waiting for her._

_Halfway to Harry Potter._

_It didn't feel strange to be seeing him waiting for her at the end of her journey._

_She came to stand next to him, and turned to face him, and felt herself blush at the intensity of his gaze._

_The priest's voice echoed out in her mind, prompting her with the customary vow._

“ _I do,” she said, and the words seemed to hover in the air in front of her._

_The priest then turned to Harry, and cued him with the same speech he had given._

_Harry smiled at her._

“ _I do,” he answered, his face never stopped beaming._

“ _I now pronounce you husband and wife.”_

_Harry leaned in to kiss her. It was soft and slow and then deepened as they stood there, continuing. It was as if she was suffocating and he was her air. His hand came up to cup the back of her head and she sighed into his mouth, desperate to hold it as long as she could._

She woke with the taste of him still on her lips.

The next day, Hermione didn't know how to address the elephant in the room, that she had dreamed she was _married_ to Harry. They had entered some sort of unspoken agreement, that what happened in their dreams, stayed in their dreams. But this dream felt so much more _real_ , so much more serious, than any of the things either of them had dreamed of so far. Luckily, they had both been busy and out of the house and hadn't even seen each other all day, so she had been able to avoid the conversation entirely. By the next day, Harry probably would have forgotten the entire dream, and they could move on.

“ _I now pronounce you husband and wife.”_

_Hermione leaned forward to kiss Harry. Her lips pressed against his. She slid her tongue out ever so slightly, in a silent invitation to deepen the kiss. He responded in kind, and she felt herself bow forward, pressing as much of her body against his as she could. She sighed, desperate to hold the kiss as long as she could._

Of course, her plan immediately hit a snag when the dream returned the next night.

_Hermione was at the entrance of a marquee in the back yard of the Burrow, chairs set up inside in rows on either side of her. Standing at the end of the aisle they formed she saw Harry, in dress robes, his face beaming at her with the widest smile she had ever seen on it._

_She started walking down the aisle towards him, the massive train of the gown she found herself in trailing out behind her. She saw blue lace winding its way through the gown, matching the bouquet of blue delphinia in her hands._

The dream kept happening, night after night. Every time it was subtly different, whether it was where they were being married or how they were dressed. But every time, she was marrying Harry Potter. An entire week went by where she dreamed of nothing else.

It had started to slip into her conscious life. She caught herself daydreaming about weddings several times. Once, when they had gone to the Burrow for a family dinner, she had been standing in the backyard at the entrance to where the marquee had been set up, staring across at where the altar for Bill and Fleur's wedding had been, when Harry walked out of the house and saw her there. She had been mortified at being caught, sure he knew what she had been thinking, since he had had the same dream of them being married in that same location just the night before. But he hadn't said anything to her, just stared at her with a stunned look on his face for a small eternity as she blushed before Mrs. Weasley had summoned them both for dinner.

_Hermione Apparated into Grimmauld Place and made her way back to the kitchen._

“ _Something smells good,” she said, seeing Harry stirring a pot over the stove._

“ _How was work?” he asked, turning to smile at her._

“ _Good,” she said, and headed to the cabinets to pull out the plates and silverware. “I think we're making some real progress in the Wizengamot with the new legislation.”_

_As she set the table, the metal of her ring clinked against the spoons in her hand, and she smiled down at it._

“ _How was your day?” she asked. She headed over to the sink to wash her hands._

“ _Long,” Harry answered with a sigh. “After classes finished, I got roped into chaperoning Quidditch tryouts to make sure no one got hurt.”_

“ _Anyone standing out this year?” Hermione said, and made her way to lean against the counter next to him. “Maybe a certain metamorphmagus whose godfather is the Head of Gryffindor house, Professor Potter?”_

“ _As a matter of fact, Mrs. Potter,” Harry said, a smile on his face as he turned to her. “Teddy did make the team. He's the new Seeker.”_

“ _Oh, Harry, that's wonderful news!” Hermione gave him a quick one-armed hug, careful not to disturb his cooking. “He must have been so thrilled! And it's so wonderful that you were able to be there to share that with him.”_

“ _He was,” Harry said, and turned to face her. He wrapped his arms around her waist in a loose embrace. “Although he was a little disappointed that you weren't there to celebrate the news as well. We both were.”_

Gradually, their dreams shifted to show married life. Hermione still saw herself getting married to Harry in her dreams, but they weren't just about the ceremony now, but everything else. She saw them cooking together, shopping together, celebrating together. Living their lives, both special occasions and mundane occurrences.

But even though she never spoke of the dreams, Harry never brought them up either. They just continued on with their lives as normal during the day. And if Hermione had caught herself staring at Harry more often, or reflexively reaching out for his hand when they were next to each other, no one had commented on it either. Apparently her behavior when she spent every night thinking she was married to him wasn't any different from how she normally acted.

_Three children dressed as princesses went running past Hermione and Harry, jack o lantern pails swinging back and forth wildly in their grips. The two friends walked along the sidewalk, hand in hand, to a set of cemetery gates, and made their way inside to a familiar tombstone._

_They stood in silence for a moment, broken only by the faint screams from rambunctious kids echoing all around them._

“ _Hi mom, hi dad,” Harry said at long last. “It's been a while since I came here. Hermione was here last time too. But I wanted to introduce her to you by her new name. She's Hermione Potter now.”_

_Again the silence fell around them for another eternity._

“ _I'm so sorry they weren't able to be there for our wedding, Harry,” Hermione finally said at last._

“ _Me too,” Harry said, and she could hear the tears in his eyes through his watery voice. “I'm sorry they never got to meet you for real. They would have loved you.”_

It had been an exhausting day.

Locating her parents had been time consuming and frustrating. When they had finally found them however, and Hermione had restored their memories, it had led to a massive blow up.

Her parents had been so angry at her for what she had done, not only sending them away and taking their memories of her, but also for staying in danger herself. Halfway through the day, though, Harry, bless him, had suggested that they take a break, and the two pairs had split up for a few hours to get lunch. When they reunited, things had gone much smoother, and they worked past most of their anger.

By the time night had fallen, they were well on the way to being a happy family again. Unfortunately, the Doctors Granger were living in a small apartment at the moment, and didn't have a guest room, so the young witch and wizard returned to their hotel for the evening.

Hermione was exhausted.

Between flying halfway across the world, and the resultant jet lag, and the stress of searching for her parents as well as how emotionally draining the day had been, she was ready to collapse straight into bed.

“Thank you, Harry,” she said, as they walked into the room. “I don't know that I could have done this without you.”

“I don't know about that,” he answered her. “I don't know that I really did anything.”

“You did, Harry,” she assured her best friend. “Just being here with me made it so much easier. Knowing that you were right by my side, that I could lean on you if I needed to, was the only thing that got me through this. You've been the best friend I could ask for.”

“It's nothing you haven't done for me a thousand times over,” Harry told her. He glanced down for a moment, and she saw him hesitate for a moment, before his posture shifted, and he stood up straighter, as if he had decided something. “I haven't been that great a friend to you, though.”

“Harry?” she asked him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Ever since my birthday,” he started, and she froze, knowing that the time had finally come to discuss her dreams that he had been seeing. “I'm so sorry I keep dragging you into my dreams about … about us being married. I know that must be really awkward for you.”

Hermione froze, her mind not processing the words he had said. Harry had thought they were _his_ dreams? That didn't make any sense. They had been _her_ dreams.

“Harry,” she said, then stopped.

“I know, Hermione,” he said in a rush. “I asked you to help me with my nightmares, and you thought you knew what you were signing up for. For nightmares about the war, not for _this_. If you want to break the connection between us, I understand.”

“Harry,” she started again, and her heart broke as she saw him flinch at the word, sure that she would reject him. “I don't want to break the connection. I thought _you_ might want to, though.”

He looked up quizzically at that statement.

“Since until just this moment there wasn't a doubt in my mind that they were _my_ dreams that I was dragging _you_ into,” she said and nodded slightly at him.

She saw him work through her words, the same way she had needed to process his confession earlier, and then, as he realized what she was saying and that it was the truth, his face morphed. His lips curled up in a disbelieving smile, and the most brilliant, hopeful look she had ever seen him have.

It was like sailing around the bend in the lake and seeing Hogwarts for the first time.

It was magical.

“You mean,” he said, and she nodded rapidly. He shook himself back to the moment, and then stood up straight. “Hermione, would you like to go out on a date with me?”

“There's nothing I'd love more, Harry,” she said. She stepped forward and pulled him into a fierce hug, the first one she had given him not as a friend, but as something more.

The new school year at Hogwarts had rocketed past before Hermione had even noticed. From the time they stepped back on the Express, she and Harry had been nearly inseparable. Having their own private quarters in the Head Suite had been perfect; Hermione had gotten used to living with Harry, and the only change for their living situation had been moving from Grimmauld Place to Hogwarts.

Well. They had also started sleeping in the same bed, instead of using separate rooms.

They had both elected to stay in the castle for the holidays. Hermione's parents had decided to stay in Australia, since she had been going straight back to boarding school. They hadn't finalized whether they would be moving back to England, since they were enjoying the warmer climate, but Hermione wasn't worried. With magic, even if they were halfway around the world, it didn't seem like they were ever truly far from her.

After dinner, neither of them had been ready to go to bed, so they had curled up on the couch, watching the flames dance merrily in the fireplace. Hermione had always had trouble falling asleep on Christmas Eve, the anticipation for what the morning would bring keeping her adrenaline so high that she couldn't bring herself to rest.

But now, sprawled out across the couch, half on top of Harry, she felt relaxed and at peace with the world. She slowly drifted off to sleep, feeling it pull her down, but not resisting too hard.

_Hermione woke up with Harry's arm curled around her from where they had been laying in bed. She smiled as she turned around in his arms, and saw him wake up with her._

“ _Happy Christmas, Harry,” she said._

“ _Happy Christmas,” he answered her._

_They stayed that way for a few minutes, neither in any rush to get up, before they mutually decided it was time for them to open their presents. Hermione crawled down to the foot of the bed where the house elves had stacked the assorted gifts that were meant for them, and saw that Harry's present for her was right on top. She picked up the box, its shape one she had seen so many times, clearly containing a book inside. Harry was watching her open it with nervous anticipation, and she smiled at him, sure that she would love it. When she peeled the wrapping paper off, she saw that it was an old copy of Little Women. She couldn't help the giggle that came up from inside her at the title, then gasped when she saw the title page showed it was a first edition._

“ _Harry, it's perfect,” she said and looked up at his face. Her words didn't reassure him however, as he still looked nervous, like he was waiting for her reaction._

“ _Actually, I have a second gift for you,” he said, and stood up out of bed. He walked around to her side of the bed, and she turned to face him. Then when he got next to her, instead of handing her a present as she had expected him to do, he knelt down on one knee._

“ _Hermione, will you marry me?” he asked, as he held a ring up to her._

_Hermione gasped and_

felt herself startle awake.

She was still lying on the couch with Harry. Sometime during the night they had collapsed backward into an awkward position, and she untangled herself as gently as she could, trying her best not to wake him up.

She stepped away from the couch and a quick Tempus charm showed that it was still the middle of the night. She decided to get a glass of water to help calm herself down. They had continued to dream together, spending their sleeping hours in one of their minds or the other. While they had had more than their fair share of nightmares in the past few months, and random other dreams, both embarrassing and heartwarming, the dreams about their married life had never stopped.

They had gone down in frequency from every single night like they had been at first, but more often than not when Hermione fell asleep she would find herself as Hermione _Potter_ until she woke back up.

But while she had had plenty of dreams of being married to Harry, she had never dreamed of him proposing to her before.

When she stepped back into their common area, she saw that Harry was not asleep as she had left him, but sitting up, wide awake.

“Hey,” she said, her voice muted, trying not to disturb the stillness of the witching hour they found themselves in.

“I'm sorry about that,” Harry apologized, and she felt herself frown.

“Why, Harry?” she asked him. “I'm assuming that was one of yours if you're apologizing, but you don't have anything to be sorry for. I always liked the dreams of us being married.”

“That's not what I'm apologizing for,” he said, frustrated. He stood up and began pacing back and forth.

“Then what could you possibly have to be sorry for?” she asked him, confused.

He stopped pacing and marched into their room for a moment before returning.

“I'm sorry, because I managed to keep it a secret from you for a whole month,” he said, and dropped down to one knee in front of her. Hermione gasped, her hands flying up to her mouth, as he held out a ring, the same ring she had just seen in the dream. “And then I blurted out my entire plan in a dream the night before I was going to propose.”

“I don't know that I could have trusted anyone else with my dreams the way that I trust you,” Harry said. “And you didn't just get rid of the new bonus nightmares I got from defeating Riddle. You gave me good dreams too. Dreams of a future I never thought I would have.”

He paused for a moment. “The worst time of day for me is when I wake up in the morning. Because in our dreams, when we're married I'm so happy, and waking up means that we aren't anymore. I want to be your husband, not just in our dreams, but in real life too. Will you marry me, Hermione?”

Hermione nodded her head rapidly, and reached her hand out to meet his.

“Yes,” she said, the answer she didn't have a chance to say in the dream before she had woken up. “I want to be married to you too. Always.”


End file.
